“Well,” he said—­for our pace had been very smart indeed till then.

“I will have to think a little, sir.”

“Doesn’t look as if there were much time to think,” he muttered sardonically from under his hand.

“No, sir,” I said with some warmth.  “Not on board a ship I could see.  But so many accidents have happened that I really can’t remember what there’s left for me to work with.”

Still half averted, and with his eyes concealed, he made unexpectedly a grunting remark.

“You’ve done very well.”

“Have I the two anchors at the bow, sir?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I prepared myself then, as a last hope for the ship, to let them both go in the most effectual manner, when his infernal system of testing resourcefulness came into play again.

“But there’s only one cable.  You’ve lost the other.”

It was exasperating.

“Then I would back them, if I could, and tail the heaviest hawser on board on the end of the chain before letting go, and if she parted from that, which is quite likely, I would just do nothing.  She would have to go.”

“Nothing more to do, eh?”

“No, sir.  I could do no more.”

He gave a bitter half-laugh.

“You could always say your prayers.”

He got up, stretched himself, and yawned slightly.  It was a sallow, strong, unamiable face.  He put me in a surly, bored fashion through the usual questions as to lights and signals, and I escaped from the room thankfully—­passed!  Forty minutes!  And again I walked on air along Tower Hill, where so many good men had lost their heads, because, I suppose, they were not resourceful enough to save them.  And in my heart of hearts I had no objection to meeting that examiner once more when the third and last ordeal became due in another year or so.  I even hoped I should.  I knew the worst of him now, and forty minutes is not an unreasonable time.  Yes, I distinctly hoped. . .

But not a bit of it.  When I presented myself to be examined for Master the examiner who received me was short, plump, with a round, soft face in grey, fluffy whiskers, and fresh, loquacious lips.

He commenced operations with an easy-going “Let’s see.  H’m.  Suppose you tell me all you know of charter-parties.”  He kept it up in that style all through, wandering off in the shape of comment into bits out of his own life, then pulling himself up short and returning to the business in hand.  It was very interesting.  “What’s your idea of a jury-rudder now?” he queried suddenly, at the end of an instructive anecdote bearing upon a point of stowage.

I warned him that I had no experience of a lost rudder at sea, and gave him two classical examples of makeshifts out of a text-book.  In exchange he described to me a jury-rudder he had invented himself years before, when in command of a 3000-ton steamer.  It was, I declare, the cleverest contrivance imaginable.  “May be of use to you some day,” he concluded.  “You will go into steam presently.  Everybody goes into steam.”